


Locked in Place

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [107]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25194556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: It took several long weeks, but maybe it was inevitable. Loki finally discovers your sleep paralysis.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [107]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 9
Kudos: 177





	Locked in Place

Sometimes, when you woke up in the middle of the night, there was a demon in your room. It was tall and thin and mostly stayed in the corner of the room, watching you with eyes that burned red and orange like glowing embers. It could raise its hands up towards you, or tilt its head, but it rarely stepped any closer to the bed or moved around the room. But just its presence was enough. When you woke up frozen and unable to move, your brain always compensated by working overtime, and you always got caught up in imagining the worst. Even once you figured out that it was just sleep paralysis and that it happened to lots of people all the time, in the moment, you were always _convinced_ that it meant you were going to die.

From the little research you’d done, you knew you were kind of one of the lucky ones. There were people who dealt with sleep paralysis and imagined something sitting on their chests and sucking the life out of them. If the worst thing that “your” demon did was float ominously like a cloud of black, vaguely-human-shaped smoke, you really got off easy.

You hated the unpredictability of it, though. There wasn’t ever one clear trigger for your episodes. Lord knows that, if you could have figured out what specifically caused them, you’d cut it out immediately. You could make it through a lovely day—absolutely beautiful, full of laughter and love—and then wake up in something like hell. 

Sleeping with Loki seemed to help a lot, though. When he came to stay with you, you’d been nervous. This relationship still felt too new for him to see all the dark and gritty parts of you. Could it possibly last once he had? But so far, he had been amazing at accepting every last new aspect of your personality, no matter how awful or stupid it was. You got a solid few weeks of normal sleep in his arms. It was wonderful.

But just as you were beginning to wonder if something about Loki’s presence was doing away with those nightmares, you woke up paralyzed again. That night, you’d forced your eyes open and met the demon’s inhuman gaze from across the room. It didn’t move at all, just hovered there even as you fought to unfreeze your limbs. You had the most success with trying to wiggle your toes. You would keep your eyes on the corner and just desperately try to wiggle even a single toe. It felt like it took hours, but eventually, your body would start to respond. The demon always faded away not long after that. That night, you did the same. When you could move again, you curled yourself into Loki and hid your face in his chest and tried to force yourself to sleep again.

Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly as common as it used to be. You were even starting to get to the point where you thought that maybe you could hide this from Loki forever. He didn’t really need to know that your brain could malfunction like that. He certainly didn’t need to know how terror gripped you like an icy claw in your guts every time even now that you knew what it was and that you’d be fine in just a few minutes. You hated every single episode, but you could resign yourself to getting through them as long as they remained a secret.

So naturally, they did _not_ remain a secret.

It was the usual story. You woke up in the middle of the night, but you couldn’t open your eyes. A chill ran through your body. There was a presence in your room—something other than the calming feeling of Loki sleeping beside you. It was hard to breathe, but you did what you could, doing your best to focus only on drawing in long, slow breaths until you could get yourself back under control. It took a little bit longer than usual. As you fought for breath, you became certain, absolutely _positive_ , that the demon was moving. It was like you could feel its sick aura creeping through your room, expanding outwards to touch everything. Your brain told you that it was touching your face, now, and your lungs stopped working altogether. 

_It’s fine_ , you told yourself, trying to remain as calm as possible. _None of this is real. You are just experiencing a normal blip in your sleep-wake pattern, and your brain is creating all these things to try to explain it away. Nothing is stopping you from breathing. In. Out. In. Out._

With great effort, you got yourself breathing again, and then your eyelids popped open. There. That was a great start. You were regaining some control over some of your muscles. Now all you needed to do was wiggle your toes until you could shake this off, and then you could just go back to sleep.

But the room felt cold. Ominous. You kept feeling like a miniature in a doll house, with a giant presence glaring down at you from above and planning out some kind of malicious end for you. The demon was just one manifestation of that thing’s presence. It came here to hurt you, and so far it hadn’t been successful, but you knew it was going to keep coming. Your eyes flicked toward the corner, but it was empty. 

That was new. 

When you opened your eyes at night, it was always standing right there. But not tonight. You still couldn’t move your head, but you could almost make something out from the corner of your eye. As soon as you did, certainty settled inside you like a block of ice. It was standing on the side of the bed. It was standing next to Loki. You could imagine how its eyes would burn at you, how its empty face would look almost triumphant as it reached out to touch him. You didn’t know what would happen when it touched him, but you knew, even more than you knew your own name, that it would be bad.

You fought _hard_ against the stillness that enveloped you. In your head, you were thrashing and howling, but your body didn’t move a bit. You tried to call out Loki’s name to wake him up, but the best you could manage was a pathetic little whimper.

But you didn’t stop fighting. Soon enough, the tide began to turn. Your toes began to wiggle, followed by your whole foot, and your leg, and then you were able to lift up your body to throw yourself across Loki with a guttural growl. He woke immediately, with a sharp gasp, and his hand came up to rest on your back. The demon faded back into the night.

“Are you alright? What happened?” On any other night, you might have felt bad when you heard the rasp in his voice, the clear acknowledgment that he’d been dead asleep, but you were still just sleepy enough to feel nothing but pride for several long moments. You’d kept him safe. Whether or not you’d actually warded off the demon itself, you’d protected Loki while he slept unawares.

But then, of course, realization finally sank in. There was no demon. There was never any danger. You’d just awakened Loki from a sound sleep and now he’d surely expect an explanation. You lowered your head with a sigh before forcing yourself to pull away from him. He allowed you to, and rested his hand on your hip when you laid back down on your side facing him, but his face was a question.

“I’m sorry. I had a...dream.” It was close enough to the truth—certainly as much as you were willing to explain tonight, anyway. “Someone was going to hurt you. I didn’t mean to wake you, I just...wanted you safe.”

Of course by now you knew him well enough to know that there was no way that he’d be irritated with you upon hearing that explanation. But it still came as a surprise to you when he reached out to caress your cheek with his cool hand and gave you that soft, three-a.m. smile. He rolled onto his side to face you more clearly and pressed forward a little to kiss your forehead.

“And so you put yourself at risk to protect me? My precious love.” He kissed you again, and this time he lingered there, with his lips on your skin and his nose in your hair. “You honor me, but know this: I would rather die a thousand gruesome deaths than have you hurt at my expense.”

You could hear the truth in his words. It both comforted and disquieted you. You reached up to caress his cheek, then, and shook your head gently. “Me too. But...the other way around.” The idea of him getting hurt protecting you was horrifying for a bevy of reasons, not the least of which being that you were just a human. But that wasn’t the point tonight. You slid one of your legs between his, seeking...more of him. You could mentally berate yourself for the rest of the night, and remind yourself over and over again that it was all in your silly human head, but that would not change the fact that you longed for his touch right now. So you sought it out, and he was happy to comply. He moved a little closer to you on the bed, and moved his arm around your back so that he was holding you, and allowed you to hide your face against that lovely place where his neck met his shoulder. 

Neither of you spoke or moved for a long time. This wasn’t really the best position to fall asleep in, but you did feel your body begin to relax again. Your heart stopped hammering in your chest. Your brain stopped whirling in circles. Each breath you took was warm and sweet and smelled like Loki. He traced gentle patterns onto the skin of your back, replacing your cold dread with pleasant chills. After some time, a soft, whining groan slipped out of your mouth, and he heard it and laughed.

“Let’s reposition. You can’t sleep like that.” He started to pull away, but you clung tightly to him and shook your head.

“Yes I can.” Probably you couldn’t, but you weren’t quite willing to give him up yet. He laughed again, a little more loudly this time, and patted your back.

“Alright, then _I_ can’t. Just give me a minute, okay?” Once more he tried to pull away, but this time you let him. He rolled onto his back and readjusted the covers, then spread his arm wide and gave you an inviting look. 

Then it was your turn to fit yourself against him again, one leg slung over his as you curled into his side and rested your head on his shoulder. This _was_ a better position for sleeping, you knew, but you kept that to yourself. 

He knew it, anyway. You could feel it in the way he kissed your forehead once again, tender and sweet and loving, and in the way he splayed his fingers out against the small of your back. On some other night, he might have told you “I told you so” but maybe the atmosphere in the room tonight was different. He held his tongue and merely pulled the blanket up over your shoulder. 

“I _love_ you.” You said it to him so often, but tonight you did your best to put as much heat, as much vehemence into those three simple words as you could. He slipped his free hand beneath the blankets to catch yours and bring it up to his lips so he could kiss each of your knuckles.

“I love _you_.” He did not release you when he was finished, only allowed both hands to rest there on his chest. “Sleep well, my darling. Nothing shall trouble you further tonight. I promise.”

And he was right.


End file.
